About

SMOrc, which stands for "Space Marine Orc," is an emote on Twitch depicting the face of an Ork from the 2011 third-person shooter video game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Though the image of the green humanoid character originated from the Warhammer game, the emote was popularized by the Hearthstone community in 2013 after it was used to describe a player "going face," an expression indicating an exceptionally aggressive playstyle. In 2013, Twitch added the image to their global emotes where it slowly began to be used as a form of spam sometimes accompanied by poorly written, all-caps text to annoy or insult a streamer.

Origin

Though the exact origin is unknown, a Justin.tv chat log archived on SpeedDemosArchive from January 12th, 2013 contains usage of "SMOrc."^[1] In this log, user "pluffen" can be seen using the emote in the chat after a successful speedrun by the streamer.

Another blog post dated March 25th, 2013 from the site Exzacklyright.com features the term "SMOrc" along with imagery of the emote in a collage with other Twitch.tv and Justin.tv emotes after these were added to the platform.^[2]

Spread

Other early uses of SMOrc point to 4chan's Traditional Games board where a post from an anonymous user on October 17th, 2014 can be seen spamming the phrase repeatedly after the announcement for an upcoming stream.^[3] There are also several uses of Ork imagery from the Warhammer universe alongside the race's iconic battle cry "WAAAAGH" throughout the thread.

When the SMOrc image first began gaining ground within the Hearthstone community back in 2015, DJ KARL THE DOG released a video on YouTube (shown below) titled, “SMOrc SONG – Face Never Trade” which propelled the emote into massive popularity. Remixing the song "Choices (Yup)" by rapper E-40, the song features lyrics about Hearthstone and the SMOrc meme alongside gameplay depicting various moves/plays surrounding the meaning behind the image. With over 6 million views and 81K upvotes, the video is largely credited with pushing SMOrc into the mainstream.^[4]

Just a month after releasing the first edition of the SMOrc Song, DJ KARL THE DOG dropped another video titled, "The Face Episode (SMOrc SONG VO.2)" with another rap remix featuring the character to the beat of "The Next Episode" by Dr. Dre, which further popularized SMOrc.

Since the initial spike in fame surrounding SMOrc, the emote has slowly transformed in meaning as it’s aged--shying away from its original intent as a form of playing aggressively (especially by those who play the Hunter class in Hearthstone) or making generally unintelligent moves. Typically Hearthstone viewers will use the emote when a streamer plays Hunter or “goes face” (vs. attacking minions on the board) and is similar to the term zerg or “zerging” that’s often accompanied by phrases like "face never trade" and “face is the place.”^[5] In Hearthstone, "face" is slang for the player's character and victory is achieved by defeating this hero. "Going face" and similar terms mean directly attacking this hero.

Though still used heavily within the Hearthstone community, SMOrc is now frequently used by many on Twitch as a form of spam to be annoying or insulting. Often viewers will use the image to threaten a streamer into satisfying their demands or complying with them. If a streamer doesn’t listen, viewers will spam the chat with the emote repeatedly.^[6] This newer usage as a form of viewers rioting against streamers goes beyond the Hearthstone community and can be seen throughout Twitch with almost any game.

As of January 2020, SMOrc is one of the most frequently used Twitch emotes with roughly 600,000 uses on the streaming platform per day (according to the Twitch analytics site StreamElements).^[7] The iconic imagery has become so mainstream that there are now tons of products online featuring the face of SMOrc on artwork, coffee cups, T-shirts and more.

Examples

Search Interest

External References